Massachusetts’ difficulty in finding ways to sustainably support its public transportation system (and its still-stuttering efforts to improve pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure) – in other words, its continuing inability to move away from overwhelming dependence on cars – is simply a specific example of a national problem.  In Congress and in many states cars are still king, if only because most people have no other choice:  a 2003 Harvard study found that owning a dependable car was a better predictor of finding and maintaining a job than having a GED.

As in many other jurisdictions, Massachusetts’ MBTA’s budget crisis, temporarily settled by fare hikes and service cuts, will return again next year as an even bigger and more catastrophic problem.  The MBTA Board has just approved a FY13 budget that depends on $61 million in one-time and uncertain revenues – and still ends up with a $100 million funding gap in FY14. The rerun will wreak havoc not only on the 1.24 million people who use the MBTA every day but on the entire Metro-region economy.  A 10% drop in T ridership, within the range of possibility for the current reductions and probably an underestimate if future cuts are needed, will cost the state economy nearly $66 million a year simply dues to increased road congestion.  Even car drivers will suffer as more people are forced to get back into their cars and endure even higher levels of time-wasting congestion, injurious accidents, and greater air/water pollution.

But the Legislature doesn’t seem willing to save the T.  They seem to see it as a Boston problem, or at least an eastern Massachusetts problem.  Why should people in the rest of the state, or even people in the metro area who don’t use public transit, have to pay extra to help those who do?  Most Massachusetts residents use cars, not busses or trains, and they’ve got a whole lot of higher priority personal stresses.

We seem to be at a stalemate.  For the past several years, the opposition has hid behind the slogan of “reform before revenue” – demanding that the MBTA reduce waste, inefficiency, and favoritism before being considered “worthy” of any additional support.  And, in fact, the past three Secretaries of Transportation have taken this challenge seriously.  MassDOT in general, and the MBTA in specific, have found an estimated $125 million in annual savings. There isn’t much water left to squeeze from that stone.

But it’s not clear how to move forward from here.

Perhaps the best strategy is to stop focusing on the T itself.  Perhaps it would make more sense to accept that cars are still the most commonly used method of travel, and given our infrastructure and living patterns they are likely to remain dominant even while both gas prices and sea levels rise.  Perhaps it’s time to more directly acknowledge the public transportation needs of people living in the “mid-west” and “western” parts of the state – and even in parts of the Metro area that are poorly served by the T.  Perhaps we should stop talking about transportation as a separate issue and start framing discussions about public investment around a package of issues including economic development and personal health, children’s safety and neighborhood quality, access to jobs and availability of services.

We need to develop policies that accept the car-saturated current reality as the unavoidable starting point, while laying the foundation for movement towards a more balanced and (economically, environmentally, and medically) healthy future.  It’s true that the rising cost of car use and the collapsing value of outer fringe housing will slowly push people into denser and more mixed-use walkable neighborhoods.  But if the process is only driven by market forces, the pain and disruption of the transitions will fall disproportionately on those with the least power and resources.  The quicker, less costly, and more equitably we want the change to occur, the more we need to push for enabling zoning, building code, and transportation policies and projects. In short, perhaps we have to be bolder and more visionary in our goals while becoming more modest about our starting points.

The basic political fact is that the MBTA fiscal crisis will only be solved as part of a broader and visionary package to revitalize the state’s (and the nation’s) entire transportation system in a way that simultaneously incorporates goals related to issues traditionally seen as separate.

Continue Reading »

Although it was nearly a half-century ago it was also the starting point for most of the transportation issues we face today.  The Interstate Highway System was poised to push into the Boston metropolitan area – crashing through Somerville, Cambridge, The Fenway, the South End, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain.  Thousands of families had already lost their homes, and thousands more were about to.

Yet, at the seemingly last minute, the destruction was stopped.  It took a combination of grass roots protest and elite power politics, but it won – stopping the highways and diverting funds to public transportation.  In the process, the anti-highway campaign transformed state and national transportation policy, pulling the War on Poverty’s citizen participation ethos into a whole new policy area, changed government’s priority from serving cars to preserving homes, and taught an entire generation of planners that traffic volume was created by public policy rather than an inevitable independent phenomena.

But the victory was short lived, or at least only thinly accepted.  Over the decades the culture and practice of road design forgot that the most important context was not the anticipated future volume of cars but the desired quality of life of the surrounding neighborhoods.  Traffic engineers forgot that the priority wasn’t to narrow the scope of their work in order to ensure success, but to broaden their concerns to incorporate a broad variety of non-transportation-related policy goals.

In recent years, some national and state leaders have tried to recapture the old lessons.  But the effort is still a work in progress, with the on-the-ground reality seldom as good as the high-level principals supposedly guiding it.

Still, there are some places – Cambridge’s Kendall Square being one – where the pressure of non-transportation policies forced decision-makers to relearn the lessons of the old anti-highway fight.  And it turns out that the resulting policies work – car volume can actually decrease without sacrificing economic and population growth.  The old lessons turn out to be true:  if you build roads, they will come by car; if you don’t build it, they  take transit, walk, or bike.

Continue Reading »

There was a time when the very idea of using road space for bike lanes struck most Americans both absurd and an invitation to disaster.  While some reality-challenged people still hold on to that position most people seem to have moved on.  Most big cities now have at least some bike lanes.  It turns out that the presence of bike lanes makes roads feel and actually be statistically safer for both bikes and cars –attracting more cyclists on to the road which makes (most) drivers more aware and accepting of their presence, reducing speed (but not “through put” – the time it takes to get down the road), and keeping less-skilled cyclists and drivers out of each other’s way.

There was also a time when the idea of placing a separator between a bike lane and car traffic – using a painted buffer or bollards or parked cars or even a curb – seemed bizarre to most people, including many bike advocates!  And now even as established an organization as the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) includes cycle tracks as an accepted technique in its list of possible designs – including them in proposals for the River and Western Avenue bridges over the Charles and even (hopefully) on the Longfellow!  It turns out that having separate “paths” for bikes and cars, and finding ways to promote the separation of bikes and pedestrians on shared paths, also increases both the perception and reality of safety.

It’s all happened very quickly.  But now the fight seems to be over “contra-flow” lanes – a bike lane that allows cyclists to safely move against traffic on a one-way street.  (These are not physically separated cycle tracks or paths, on which the direction of travel isn’t an issue.)  Beyond simple fear of change, the emotional energy behind the opposition to on-road contra-flow seems to have three sources.  First, it’s another tweak at the cultural assumption that streets are for cars.  Second, it adds insult to injury by allowing bikes to do something that car drivers aren’t allowed to do, really annoying drivers who may be willing to tolerate bikes but believe that it’s not fair for cyclists to do anything that cars can’t.  Third, there are people who fear for their safety as pedestrians – it’s scary enough to them that bikes have been added to the street mix, but adding the possibility that racing cyclists might be coming from an atypical direction is simply too much.

The reality, of course, is that properly located and designed contra-flow lanes actually make the streets safer for everyone including pedestrians and car drivers.   In a situation where the “with traffic” detour requires cyclists to use a long, intimidating, or even dangerous route, they are very likely to prefer to go “against traffic” on the blocking one-way street. (For example, cars going from the Public Garden to the medical area have to use Storrow Drive to get around one-way Charles Street.  Is it surprising that bicyclists aren’t willing to follow?) Still, although contra-flow is not really a very new idea – examples have been around for many years – it is a relative newcomer to the mainstream discussion.  And, like the pool table in River City, as the latest new thing contra-flow lanes are a lightning rod for anxiety.

The strategy for advocates is to trace the electricity back to its source – to find ways to talk to people about the basis for their nervousness.  We can’t solve the existential apprehension of living in uncertain times, when so much seems unstable and insecure if not dangerous.  But we can address the specific concerns about bike lanes – in any direction.  There are, it turns out, tested and effective methods of ensuring that contra-flow bike lanes work – which implies that it is also possible to place one in an inappropriate location or to design it in an ineffective manner: something that we have to also acknowledge.  It’s our job to be clear about the difference.

Continue Reading »

It’s totally understandable that Secretary of Transportation Richard Davey has been focusing on the MBTA fiscal crises.  Public transit – train, subway, trolley, bus, and ferry – is the backbone that supports the entire regional transportation system, and the region’s economic well-being.

But we can only hope that the MBTA crisis will not totally pull Secretary Davey away from the highway division.  A crucial test of his agency’s commitment to the GreenDOT, WeMove, Healthy Transportation Compact, and Mode Shift policies is now happening around the McGrath/O’Brien Highway Corridor – which MassDOT has designated as a key pilot project that will explore ways to embody these programs and values into transportation planning, including MassDOT’s first use of a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) process maximize the project’s positive impact on public health.

But it seems that without high level intervention, MassDOT is in danger of failing to live up to the Commonwealth’s transportation goals –ending up once again treating car traffic as the controlling priority rather than the larger issues of community well-being and sustainable transportation infrastructure.

The controversy about McGrath/O’Brien has two levels – whether or not to spend up to $11 million to repair the deteriorating McCarthy overpass’s car lanes, and what to recommend as the long-term design for the entire corridor’s roadway system.

Events on both of those levels are precipitating a flurry of advocacy.  First was the Highway Division’s request to the MassDOT Board to approve the Overpass repair contract – without going through any meaningful process of public review on the grounds that it is “merely” a short-term maintenance issue, even though the repairs are intended to keep the Highway in use as-is for up to 15 years.

Second was the presentation to the community of MassDOT’s range of options for consideration in the “Grounding McGrath” study to conceptually outline the corridor’s future design – a set of options that continues to prioritize through-travel by cars over reconnecting Somerville’s cut-apart neighborhoods or setting the foundation for local economic growth.

Together, the two events make people wonder if MassDOT is simply going to mouth the words and go through the motions but end up simply repeating its old “cars first” orientation.

Continue Reading »

It was pretty amazing that Boston Transportation Department (BTD) Commissioner Tom Tinlin came to the annual Boston Bike program update two weeks ago.  (Nichol Freedman once again won over the audience with It was also amazing that he stayed for the whole meeting taking notes on every suggestion and complaint – and that he intends to follow up and then let people know what was done.

It’s even more amazing because it’s actually the Department of Public Works (DPW) that is supposedly in charge of building and maintaining city roads, not the BTD!  DPW Commissioner Joanne Massaro chairs, and her staff provides the engineering support for, the Public Improvement Commission which has the responsibility “to lay out, widen, relocate, alter, discontinue or rename public highways, and to order the making of specific repairs.”

But in Boston, for all the unevenness and incompleteness and frustrations of the process, it’s clearly the Transportation Department that is moving us towards a different kind of road system – and a significant reason for that is their relationship with the bicycling community.

Continue Reading »

It was only a few years ago that Bicycling Magazine called Boston the nation’s worst place for cyclists.  Senior city officials were openly hostile to bicycling.  The media portrayed cyclists as wild messengers cursing at everyone and running over pedestrians.

Then Hub On Wheels revealed that there was a mainstream constituency for bicycling.  The Mayor got a bike and discovered that bicycles were fun and cyclists were friendly.  LivableStreets Alliance started pulling the city’s advocacy groups together while pushing for the bike lanes and cycle tracks previously scorned by the “vehicular cyclists.”  Nicole Freedman was hired to create the Boston Bike program which has significantly improved road facilities, expanded access, and promoted skill training.  The Mayor proclaimed that “the car is no longer kind.”  And the Hubway bike share program made cycling part of the everyday routines of thousands of ordinary people.

Things are a lot better.  Boston has just been awarded Silver Status by the League of American Bicyclist’s “Bicycle Friendly City” program.  It’s simply amazing how many people are now out on the road – there are even bike traffic jams at certain intersections!  Who would have imagined we’d move so far in such a short time!

Of course, not everything was done perfectly and frustrating short comings abound.  Bicycling is not yet mainstream; we haven’t yet hit the tipping point.

So what would push Boston from being “better” to reaching the “world class” status the Mayor has proclaimed as our goal?  The “Six E’s” strategy includes Encouragement, Education, Enforcement, as well as Evaluation.  These are all important.  (I particularly love the Roll It Forward free-bike and the Youth Instruction programs focused on low-income kids.)  But I believe the strongest foundation for real progress comes from the fifth and sixth “Es” – Engineering and Equity.  Some percentage of the population will never get on a bicycle.  But there are a lot of people who would be happy to ride if they felt safe – primarily meaning safe from cars.  It’s true of baseball fields and bike facilities (and highways!) – if you build it, they will come.

The projects that will move us to the next level have to be safe and easy enough to make bicycling attractive even to cautious riders.  They have to serve both functional and recreational needs – as useful for commuting as for weekend family outings.  They have to make bicycling an even more visible part of our transportation mix.  And they have to be done well.

Here are five possibilities – I urge readers to suggest possible others:

• Expand Hubway
• Create the Bicycle Network
• Develop Open Streets Program
• Connect With The Regional Greenways
• Prioritize Bicycling, Walking, & Transit

———————————————— Continue Reading »

I wear a bike helmet.  Always.  Every time I get on a bike.  I don’t think that the helmet will keep me from having an accident, just that it will protect me from serious head injury if I do.

It’s likely that people who cycle like I do – regular commuters with enough experience and confidence to ride within busy traffic – suffer the most severe injuries.  I don’t want to be one of those statistics.  As my daughter (the doctor!) says about helmetless speedsters, “I hope they’re carrying an organ donor card.”

But avoiding injury is not my main motivation for cycling.  In addition to being cheaper and often faster than any other mode of urban commuting (as well as less polluting and more energy efficient), it helps me control my weight, stay fit, sleep better at night, have more energy the rest of the day, almost always puts me in a better mood – and is simply fun to do.  It keeps me healthy – body and soul.  I think it would be good for society if more of us biked instead of drove for at least the 25% of daily trips that are less than a mile long, if not for the 40% that are less than two miles and the 50% of daily commutes of less than five miles.

Safety and health:  two goals – the issue is how to pursue both at the same time.  Safety usually is given first place – although it seems as much from fear of getting sued as anything else. And given the profit-driven insanity of both our health insurance and liability systems, I don’t blame bike clubs bike  or sponsors of cycling events for requiring that all participants wear helmets.

However, regardless of my personal proclivity, I don’t think it’s a good idea for governments to require that everyone wear a helmet.  Based on my own decades of bicycling around Boston, it seems that the biggest improvement in drivers’ acceptance of my presence – and therefore of my safety – happens when there are more cyclists on the road.  I’ve also seen the “numbers vs. accident rate” graphs from other cities, which reinforce the “safety comes from numbers” message.  And while it seems to be that a higher percentage of cyclists are wearing helmets these days than when I started, I’ve always assumed that requiring helmets would discourage some percentage of people from using a bike, which would both reduce safety and the public health benefits of physical activity.

“Assumed.”  “Thought.” “Felt.” “Experienced.”  – But I didn’t know.  Fortunately, it turns out that a lot of relevant research has been done on the topic.  With the help of Anne Lusk (Research Scientist, Harvard School of Public Health) and Price Armstrong (Program Manager, Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition/MassBike), we’ve pulled together 35 annotated citations, one of the most extensive lists I’ve found anywhere.   (The annotated links are visible by clicking on “Continue Reading…” below.)

The results are clear:  bike helmets reduce the severity of head injuries but not the frequency of accidents or the percentage of head injuries caused by those accidents.  Worse, the passage of mandatory helmet use laws have actually been associated with increased accident rates because they led to significant decreases in the overall number of bicyclists, undermining the “safety comes from numbers” reality, with particularly disastrous impact on bike share programs.

But simply opposing mandatory helmet laws is not enough.  Safety and health are both legitimate goals.  And we do not yet have enough evidence to fully evaluate strategies for pursuing them in mutually reinforcing ways.  However, it is time for the bicycling, public health, and public safety communities to move beyond traditional assumptions and find ways to further test and analyze the impact of the following:

1)      Stepping up efforts to create safer bicycle facilities that have been shown to increase the number of “traffic intolerant” bicyclists and reduce crashes, such as traffic-separated cycle tracks, buffered bike lanes, and low-traffic “neighborways.”

2)      Conducting a public relations campaign that highlights the health, environmental, economic, and travel-time benefits of bicycling for both car drivers and bicyclists.

3)      Conducting a campaign educating drivers about safer methods of interacting with bicyclists, and educating cyclists about safer ways of interacting with cars.  The cyclist component could be part of an effort to publicize the value, and increase the availability, of bicycling skill training workshops and classes – whose graduates are also more likely to wear helmets.  (Although such a campaign would draw on the principles of “Share the Road” programs, several people have suggested that the term “Share the Road”  not be used as it can increase the public perception of bicycling as dangerous and sometimes causes a backlash from car drivers who don’t think they should have to share the roads with bicyclists.  San Francisco messages around “co-existing.”)

4)      Conduct a public relations campaign to encourage voluntary helmet wearing – which has been shown to both increase the percentage of people using helmets but also discourage cycling (although not as much as a mandatory helmet requirement) because it reinforces the public perception of bicycling as dangerous.

Hopefully, we can accumulate enough data to make intelligent choices that encourage more “ordinary” and traffic-intolerant people to regularly bicycle (including children and the elderly) while reducing the likelihood of injury-causing accidents, and lowering the severity of head and other injuries if an accident occurs.

——-

(Note: I do support requiring and enforcing laws mandating front & back night lights since it reduces the risk of getting hit by a car by making it easier for drivers to see cyclists, and there is no evidence that their requirement will reduce the number of bicyclists.  Personally, I’m also fanatic about wearing shiny yellow jackets with as much reflective tape as will stick on.  It kills any hope of being a fashionista, but it makes me feel safer.)

Continue Reading »

Keep It Simple.  Focus.  You can’t walk and tie your shoes at the same time.  Projects are much easier to manage, and it is easier to hold project managers accountable, if there is a single and explicit goal.  Transparency is vital to maintain public trust in government, and it is best accomplished when the line from spending to result is clear and straightforward.

On the other hand, life is complicated, everything is connected, and the need for improvement is enormous.  Every project impacts its audience, and the world, in complex and multiple ways.  Given the scarcity of funds and the magnitude of the problems facing us, doesn’t it make sense to leverage every opportunity to create as much positive change as possible – and to increase the odds of overall success by being explicit about each of the top priority goals even if they relate to different issues?

Furthermore, creating a coherent and effective solution to a problem often requires dealing with an enormous breath of complexity.  Creating a “one stop shopping” approval process capable of providing “rapid decisions” for business developers is a common government goal that requires enormous inter-organizational coordination behind the unified application form.  Boston’s office of “urban mechanics” is creating simple and direct methods for citizens to interact with local government, which is forcing significantly complex organizational changes in the internal operation of city hall.  And, as software developers seeking to create easy, self-explanatory user-interfaces have learned, the simpler the presentation the more complicated the programming that empowers it.  Maybe we need to accept that managing complexity, that having multiple explicit goals, is part of having effective public programs.

Continue Reading »

What will save the MBTA – and our region – from the disastrous effects of proposed service reductions and price increases?  Over the past few years, in response to the demand for “reform before revenue,” innovative T leadership has significantly improved efficiency, squeezed more out of available resources, and improved communications with the public.

There now seems to be general agreement that the key issue is revenue both for capital and operating costs.  The T is not only saddled with the highest rate of debt of any major city transit system, it is also burdened with deteriorating old equipment that is costly to maintain.  At a minimum, the T needs debt relief, if not an infusion of capital for upgrading, as well as a replacement for the failed “piece of the sales tax” strategy for supplementing fares as a way to cover operating costs.

What will it take for the state’s political leadership to overcome their fear of provoking anti-tax backlash and provide the needed help?  Election year realities are that politicians are unlikely to do anything unless outside groups create enough political space to reduce the risk by fostering a public perception that the situation is a crises, that operations are now better managed, and that new revenues are the appropriate solution.  Even then, it will take some courage for Administration and state Legislative leaders to act – the Patrick Administration’s previous “trial balloon” discussion of a possible increase in the gas tax met with so much push back that most politicians became very wary.  And we need them to be bold – to call for taking over the T’s debt (as was done when the Turnpike Authority was rolled into the new Mass Department of Transportation several years ago), providing new capital for system upgrades, and creating an adequate flow of operating funds.

We know that the cutbacks and fare hikes will reduce ridership.  So it makes sense that the public has been vocally protesting at every one of the open meetings the T has held around the region in recent weeks.  Low-income and inner-city residents will be particularly hurt, and their advocates have also been speaking up.  Similarly, we know that transit is an essential component of a balanced regional transportation system.  So it makes sense that transportation advocates have been sending letters and mobilizing their members.  And some local political leaders, most notably Boston Mayor Menino, have been speaking out.

But we haven’t heard nearly enough from the environmental, climate protection, and medical communities about the increases in pollution, greenhouse gases, asthma, obesity, diabetes, and other costly health problems that will inevitably result from a decrease in transit ridership.

And most of all, we haven’t heard from the business community.  If cars are the only way for people to get to work or to shop the current levels of congestion will look like a golden age.  It will be harder to get employees to move (or stay) here, including the young professionals who are the backbone of our economy.  Wages of low- and mid-range workers, particularly important to a service-oriented economy such as Boston’s will have to go up.  Former senior T manager, Peter O’Conner says that reducing T service makes as much sense, and will have a similar economic impact, as shutting I-93 each weekend or leaving the snow on Rte. 128 all winter.

“Until we recognize in an explicit and consequential way that the T’s operation, maintenance, and expansion are as important to our economic well-being as our electric, water and sewer, and life-safety infrastructure, as well as the other parts of our transportation infrastructure such as our roads, bridges, and airports, we are doomed to go around and around in this debate about public transportation in an ever-accelerating ‘death spiral.’…we will have, sadly, been the agents of our own economic contraction.”  (from Commonwealth  Magazine)

Transit users and advocates for a variety of issues have to keep pushing.  Their work is absolutely necessary, but unfortunately insufficient.  It seems that creating the political climate for action requires the vocal presence of the region and state’s business leadership.  If they remain silent, or remain only willing to play a quiet background role, they will have only themselves to blame for the bottom line results of a bankrupt T.

———————-

Related previous postings include:

> SAVING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: Safe Routes To The “T”

> GREEN LINE EXTENSION: State Needs To Make The Trains Run On Time

> THE COMPLEX INGREDIENTS OF LIVABLE CITIES: Complete Streets to Interior Design, Transit to City Planning, Art to Education

The Cambridge City Council recently passed a home rule petition (HB3852)  asking the state Legislature to give it the authority to significantly increase the penalties to be paid by pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists for a wide variety of road violations.  Jaywalking fines would increase from $1 to $75.  Cyclists could be fined up to $75 for any of several violations, from lacking appropriate night-time lights and reflectors to extending the front fork beyond its original length.  (See below for full list of bicycling prohibitions.*)  Any vehicle (truck, car, or bike) ignoring a yield or stop sign or a blinking or solid red light could be fined up to $250.

A local group called TROMP (Travel Responsibility Outreach & Mentoring Project) proposed the bill. The Cambridge Bicycle Committee opposes it.

Rumors are also flying that Mayor Menino will propose a helmet law with stiff penalties.  Some public health people support it; most bike advocates are opposed.

Are passing laws and increasing penalties the best way to improve street safety?  Maybe it is good strategy in some situations but not others.  Perhaps there are many situations in which changing the road’s infrastructure (e.g. creating “complete streets” or using traffic calming to lower speeds to no more than 20 mph) are more likely to change behavior and/or improve safety. It turns out that, in fact, we actually know a lot about this issue.

Continue Reading »